


In the Eye of a Hurricane

by onethingconstant



Category: Captain America (Movies), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantastic Beasts Fusion, Awesome Sarah Rogers, Becca Barnes is the actual best, Brooklyn Boys, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky is an Obscurial, Cameo by Wanda Maximoff, Depressed Bucky Barnes, Friendship, Gen, I really don't care, Magic, No seriously it's 1926, Obscurus, One Hamilton reference, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve is a Squib, Suicidal Thoughts, Wooden spoons are basically wands, You can infer Stucky if you need to, one terrible pun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8951695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onethingconstant/pseuds/onethingconstant
Summary: Bucky Barnes was nine years old, and he wasn’t going to make it to ten. He had a hurricane in his head.

Bucky has a secret so terrible he’s planning to end his own life to save the people he loves. On his way to die, he happens on three kids beating a scrawny little blond kid in a filthy alley. With nothing left to lose, Bucky steps in—and everything goes pear-shaped for the next ninety years … 
(A Fantastic Beasts AU).





	

**Author's Note:**

> _About the content label: This story involves nine-year-old Bucky Barnes planning to take his own life. He has a very good reason, in context, and he doesn’t get close to carrying out his plan, but he does a lot of thinking about it and he despises himself quite deeply. Care for yourselves, darlings._
> 
> Author’s Notes:
> 
> So as part of my ongoing effort to avoid having a complete meltdown during the holidays (like I, um, did last year), I’m trying to spend time doing things that I enjoy and that feed my spirit. To that end, I’ve set up a marathon of movies (in theaters and on disc) and TV shows in my various fandoms. 
> 
> Harry Potter is not a primary fandom for me, but I do enjoy it, so two days ago I finally got around to seeing _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_. I went primarily because my amazing bestie, who is tammyb77 on Instagram, had been suggesting I write a story about little Steve and Bucky running around 1926 New York in the _Fantastic Beasts_ ’verse, possibly adopting a small monster or something. And then I saw the movie.
> 
> I walked out with a story that was _not_ about Bucky Barnes keeping a baby dragon in his jacket. 
> 
> Please note: I haven’t read the Harry Potter books in a while, I don’t consider myself a Potterhead, and I might well get minutiae of the fandom insultingly wrong. Any errors are my own, and unintentional, and committed out of love. I just really love the idea of the Obscurus, okay?
> 
> Oh, and the title comes from _Hamilton_ ’s “Hurricane” because it was stuck in my head while I was writing this.

Bucky Barnes was nine years old, and he wasn’t going to make it to ten. He had a hurricane in his head.

He’d never even _seen_ a hurricane, he thought miserably as he scuffed his way down Livonia Avenue, kicking savagely at anything that crossed his field of vision. A beer bottle went skittering, followed closely by a scandalized rat. And the way things were going, he never _would_ see a hurricane. Not a real one. Hurricanes happened in Florida, and Bucky had never been south of Jersey. And even if his pa somehow found the money to take the family to Florida, Bucky wouldn’t let them go. Not for him. He wasn’t worth spending money on, not when he was gonna die soon anyhow.

For all that he’d never seen a tropical cyclone, Bucky knew the thing trapped in his skull was one. It twisted and whirled and roared, black and swirling, and it hurt people. No matter what he did, he couldn’t keep it inside. One time it had picked up his sister Becca’s doll and smashed it against the ceiling, shattering the toy’s china head. Bucky had told his ma that _he’d_ thrown the doll, and he’d taken his whipping without a sound, but he knew he’d never touched the thing. He would never hurt Becca or anything she loved, no matter how annoying she was. The doll had moved on its own. 

The hurricane hated Bucky’s sisters, and that was why Bucky knew he was going to die. 

He didn’t want to, but he had to. The hurricane wasn’t just sliding books across his bedroom floor anymore, or making Ma’s candles light unexpectedly. His head throbbed all the time now, so bad he cried into his pillow at night. He’d thrown up on one of the girls once, it hurt so much. 

His ma had taken him to the doctor. Growing pains, the man had said. From this, Bucky had learned that doctors didn’t know a hurricane from a hole in the wall.

Bucky stamped at a cockroach, but it skittered off. He growled at it in frustration, and clenched his fists. Fists that, an hour ago, had left dents in the wall of his family’s apartment, one on either side of Kitty’s head. She was his youngest sister, barely two years old, and the hurricane had hammered the plaster around her as she stood frozen in terror and Bucky shrieked in agony. 

He was supposed to be watching over her. Ma had made him promise no harm would come to her under his supervision. Thirty-two minutes and one tantrum later, the hurricane had made a liar out of him. Tears welled from his eyes as he stomped down Livonia, and for once he didn’t care who saw him. It didn’t matter anymore.

Bucky was going to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. 

He wondered if it would hurt, decided it didn’t matter. He had to do it before the hurricane burst out of him. Becca and Mags and Kitty and Ma and Pa and everybody in the neighborhood—they were more important than Bucky. All he could think of was keeping them safe. 

Bucky knew from church that suicides went to hell. Maybe God would make an exception for him. Becca would probably badger God until He gave in, anyway. Bucky suspected that Becca understood him, somehow, in the weird unspoken way of little sisters. The two of them were each other’s Irish twins, and they’d always been close. 

Yeah, Becca would understand. The thought made him feel a little calmer as he stalked toward his inevitable fate. 

Then he heard the _thud_. 

It wasn’t the _thud_ of a flour sack hitting the ground, or garbage landing in the can, or a piece of fruit rolling off a cart. It sounded exactly like a shoe _thudding_ into a body. Not a big body, either; the sound didn’t have much meat to it. 

Bucky’s first and only thought was _Becca!_ before he charged into the alley that had made the noise.

It wasn’t Becca. It was a skinny little blond boy, even smaller than Becca, curled up on the ground and getting kicked all over by three bigger boys Bucky had never seen in his life. 

(Later, he’d realize how weird that was. He knew every kid in the neighborhood within five years of his age, but not those three. Didn’t they go to school or anything? But he wasn’t thinking much right then.)

As Bucky watched, the skinny kid got an arm under his body and tried to push himself up, but one of his tormentors kicked it out from under him. 

“Whatsamatter, Squib?” the boy, biggest of the trio, jeered at his victim. “C’mon! Didja leave your wand at home or somethin’?” He drove his heel into the blond boy’s ribs.

Bucky had a moment of perfect clarity.

He was on his way to the bridge. He had the hurricane. There would be no scolding from Ma, no disappointed look when Pa found out Bucky had been fighting. He was unstoppable now, and there would be no consequences. He could do anything he wanted.

And what he _wanted_ to do …

Bucky closed his eyes, threw back his head, and for the first time in his life, he let his hurricane loose.

It roared out of him, and he saw it through his eyelids as it boiled up to fill the sky, sweeping up trash and street debris, clawing at the brickwork, battering at the whole world as it frantically sought an object for its rage. It snatched the three boys off their feet, spinning them into the air and slamming them into the walls. The big one was getting higher and higher, and the hurricane was growing, whirling out of control, and Bucky could feel the last terrified pieces of him breaking apart because the hurricane was everything, _everything_ —

“Don’t kill them!”

The hurricane paused, caught off-guard. Bucky opened his eyes. 

The skinny blond kid was rising from the filthy ground, bruises already blossoming on one side of his face. His eyes were enormous under the dirt, and they were the color of the sky after a summer storm. Bucky stared, hypnotized.

“It’s okay,” the blond boy said softly, as if he were coaxing a stray dog. “I’m okay. You’re safe. It’s gonna be okay.”

Three whimpering boys floated overhead. Bucky whimpered too.

“I’m—I’m Steve,” the blond boy said, his voice shaking a little. “Steve Rogers. I live offa Saratoga—you know, the rat-trap tenement with the green door?”

Bucky whined, high and painful.

“What’s your name?” Steve asked. It was the gentlest anybody had ever spoken to Bucky.

“B—B—B—” Bucky sucked in a shuddering breath. “ _BuckyBarnes_.” It came out as a one-word sob. 

Steve nodded, a little frantically. “Nice to meetcha, Bucky. Say, you wouldn’t have a sister named Becca, wouldja?”

Bucky sobbed again, and nodded.

Steve lit up. “Boy, she’s swell! She was in my class last year. Smartest kid in the room!”

Reflexively, Bucky felt a swell of pride fill his chest. The floating boys drifted lower. 

“D’you like baseball?” Steve asked, stepping closer. “Me, I love the Dodgers. I never miss a game on the radio. How ’bout you, Buck?”

Bucky’s breathing was shaky and shallow, but he felt it slowing down. He nodded to show Steve he was still listening.

“That’s good,” Steve told him. “You’re doin’ great, Buck. Just take it nice an’ easy. I’m gonna help you. Say, didja hear what Dazzy Vance did on the mound last week?”

The words washed over him, a warm unbroken stream of chatter, and gradually the hurricane died down, and suddenly Bucky was standing in a stinking alley with rubble everywhere and three groaning bullies lying on top of it, and Steve Rogers had his arms around him.

“Steve?” Bucky whispered.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve said into his neck. 

“What happened?”

“We gotta go talk to my ma,” Steve mumbled. She’ll know what to do.” He leaned back to study Bucky’s face like he was planning on drawing a portrait later. “I never met an Obscurial before.”

“A what?” said Bucky.

—

And that was how Bucky met Sarah Rogers, a tiny and terrifying Irishwoman who made her son’s bruises vanish with a wave of a wooden spoon. (“It’s just as good as any wand,” she told Bucky, who nodded like he’d understood anything she’d said.)

That was how Bucky learned what an Obscurus was, and an Obscurial, and that his parents were something that Sarah called “Muggles” and Steve called “No-Madges,” and that he, Bucky, was neither of those things. 

That was how Bucky moved in with the Rogers family for a month of furious basic training while Steve sketched in the corner and occasionally shot longing looks at Bucky. That was how Bucky learned what a Squib was. 

At the end of the month, he broke the nose of the first bully to say the word to Steve. And he used his fists to do it.

When he turned around, Steve was grinning at him.

“What?” Bucky demanded. 

“It’s just …” Steve took a breath. “I never had a pal before.”

—

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky breathed as he lay on the table, gazing at what could only be heaven.

“ _Alohomora_ ,” Steve said, and the straps broke. 

“What happened to you?” Bucky slurred.

Steve slipped an arm around him and hauled him up. “I joined the Aurors.”

—

Bucky stared into Steve’s eyes as he fell from the train, and his hurricane was blue-sky silent.

—

“Who the hell is Bucky?” the Asset demanded, and the wind stirred around him in ominous ink-black swirls.

—

“I’m with you to the end of the line,” the man on the bridge slurred, and a black hurricane tore the helicarrier to shreds.

—

“Your mom’s name was Sarah,” Bucky rasped. “You useta be a Squib.”

“Can’t read that in a museum,” Steve agreed.

—

“Buck, I want you to meet Wanda,” Steve said. “She’s a lotta things, but one of ’em’s a Legilimens.”

Bucky smiled at her to hide his fear. When the girl smiled back, she looked like Becca.

—

Bucky Barnes was one hundred years old, and he wasn’t done living yet.

“I never asked,” Steve said quietly one night. “I know the Obscurus—or what was left of it—helped you break the conditioning. But what was it like?”

Bucky snorted and took a swig of beer. “Like having a hurricane in your head,” he said darkly. 

“Aw, God, Buck.”

“’s not so bad.” Bucky leaned into Steve’s shoulder and rested his head in the hollow of his best friend’s neck. “Not if you know the trick.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

Bucky looked up at clear, bright blue.

“As much as you can,” he said, “stay in the eye.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Irish twin: slang term for two siblings born very close together, often less than a year apart, frequently due to parents’ lack of access to birth control (or, in pre-Pill usage, implied lack of self-control). Yes, Bucky has internalized anti-Irish stereotypes. 
> 
> 2\. I decided that Steve, being a year younger than Bucky, would more likely be in Becca’s class than Bucky’s. Why was Steve in regular school when his tormentors are (per Bucky’s lack of recognition) in magical school? Because he’s a Squib, basically, and because his mother is a poor Irish immigrant of the sort commonly brushed off by the American school system of this time. I decided that if British class prejudices could be replicated in Hogwarts, American ones could be replicated in the American magical-school system. And how could tiny Steve Rogers, finding himself in a class that contains Becca Barnes, fail to be impressed by a whip-smart brunette who takes no shit?
> 
> 3\. Dazzy Vance was the only 1920s pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers that I could find who seemed to be a pretty OK ballplayer (albeit apparently crazy as a shithouse rat). Of course Steve would like him. 
> 
> 4\. I am on Tumblr and Instagram as onethingconstant! Follow me for pictures of Bucky Bear the Therapy Bear and my ongoing attempt to foil the plans of a particular fascist (albeit not one who’s ever run for president). 
> 
> 5\. YOU GUYS YOU GUYS THIS IS IMPORTANT! I am writing a YA novel about Norse mythology and domestic abuse and PTSD and the asexual spectrum, among other things. It kinda burst out of my head after the election like Bucky’s hurricane, and I really, really want to get it right for the sake of all the kids who are going to be enduring adolescence in a society that tells them queer means broken. If you are interested in mythology, monsters, high-school drama, queer sexualities, and/or way too much sass in one narrator-protagonist, message me your email address on Tumblr or Instagram because _I need beta readers!_ A Google Document is forthcoming.


End file.
